Clearly, Laura Price would have to find a lift back to shore.
But those were the breaks.
He tried to fool himself into thinking that he understood women. But truth be told, he didn’t. He liked to toss out a devil-may-care attitude and make the ladies think he was some kind of bad boy they could tame. That worked in his favor more times than not, but there was always the occasional disaster.
Actually he was a mama’s boy, calling that saint of a woman every Sunday, no matter where he might be in the world. She knew that he was an intelligence agent. Stephanie had allowed him to reveal that to her and she’d loved it. Of her four children—whom they named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—he was the wild child. The others had respectable jobs, families, homes, mortgages. He alone remained single, traveling the world, doing what the Magellan Billet needed done.
He’d yet to find that perfect combination of lover, companion, confidante, and partner. Maybe one day. Women seemed to marry a man expecting him to change, but he doesn’t. Men marry a woman expecting that she won’t change, but she does. That was a problem. What had one potential bride told him? Husbands are like cars. They’re all good the first year.
Lots of truth to that one.
Career, achievement, independence, and travel were tops on his list at the moment. Marriage and children not so much. Danny Daniels being his uncle may have cracked open a few doors that might have otherwise been closed, but those doors stayed open thanks to him being damn good at what he did. Of course, the past half hour had not been his finest moment.
He kept the boat headed south, recalling more of what he’d read last night.
After the Great Siege of 1565, when the Turks tried to forcibly take Malta, Grand Master Jean Parisot de Valette decided to build a fortified town on a barren limestone peninsula on the north coast. It would be Europe’s first planned city since Roman times, laid out on a grid, with a moat on its southern side and bastion walls all around. Harbors shielded to the east and west, providing ideal anchorages. For a seafaring power like the Knights of Malta, the location proved a perfect headquarters, and they eventually adapted the island into an impregnable naval base.
Two miles long and a mile wide, Valletta’s cluster of tightly packed buildings had long housed the knights and everything needed to support them. The city remained the sole witness to four centuries of hard work and magnificence. Its churches, shops, residences, palazzi, storehouses, forts, and the grand master’s palace had somehow survived, even after Hitler relentlessly bombed every square inch during World War II.
Its buildings stood in straight lines, purposefully packed close to shade the streets from the intense Mediterranean sun and to allow a sea breeze to pass through unimpeded. All told, about two thousand structures of noble elegance had been built within five years. But it took another twenty-five years after to perfect it. Little had changed since the 17th century. Luke particularly liked what de Valette had said about his creation.
Built by gentlemen for gentlemen.
The white battlements of Fort St. Elmo came into view, standing point guard at the end of the towering peninsula, commanding a stunning view of the open sea. He imagined its cannon blasting out into the harbor, repelling the advancing Turks. The whole Great Siege seemed the stuff of Hollywood. Suleiman the Magnificent—what a name—sent 40,000 warriors and over 200 ships to take Malta for Islam. De Valette commanded 500 knights, 1,100 soldiers, and 6,000 local militia. Despite pleas, no Christian king lifted a finger to help, as they were too busy killing one another.
So de Valette stood alone.
The invasion came furious and bloody, all happening during a miserably hot summer. Fort St. Elmo held out a month before finally yielding. But a lack of supplies, little fresh water, and dysentery ravaged the Turks. Terror ran rampant on both sides. Dead knights were mutilated, their headless bodies floated across the harbor on crosses to the occupied forts on the other side. Grand Master de Valette’s reply was to decapitate Turkish prisoners and fire their heads back as cannonballs.
Talk about tit-for-tat.
Finally, in September 1565, reinforcements arrived from Sicily and the Turks retreated. If things had turned out differently, Muslim shipping would have ruled the Mediterranean from a Maltese base and all of Europe would have been at risk.